I took one good look at her again… She took one of me as well, giggling, but confused now. Behind the deep confusion I detected that along her face, like a bugger in the night or a snake dragging her belly across the red-hot rocks, slithered and crept a shadow of disgust.

Am I so vile, so unbearable to everyone?

True, I hold nothing against whores. If I did, it would mean that I maintain a rage against civilization as a whole within me. Ever since culture existed, whores existed. And every single society has its whores. If it did not, it lacked culture. Does the word “cultus” nor remind one of coitus? Who am I to moralize or change anything? Who cares for the virgin Ishtar under the fertile crescent moon of Mesopotamia who goluptiously sucked Marduk’s dick in the hot Arabian nights? And thus it went by in history… an endless vastness of whoring – and the Japanese kind is somewhat dearest to me – I was unaware that I was saying all of this out loud.

And everything else, reduced to the point of being invisible. A fount of artistic fire, a poetic flame, a superspiritual beauty, no!

‘For you, madam, I have a book… A whore through the centuries. It might be of interest to you.’

Boris K. In the Gym or”Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, From Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (1.4), Marcellus to Horatio.

Boris K. took the “Mens sana in corpore sano” mantra deadly seriously and was on his way to the nearest gym. Out of sheer excitement, he forgot the towel. Truth be told, Boris K. never really sweated, what’s more the doctors diagnosed him with some armpit gland defect. He wore his tracksuit that he usually wore when he went to the farmer’s market and had sneakers on, clean, but with a tiny hole on their side.

The moment he stepped into the luxury space, akin to the gyms of Los Angeles where the Japanese Yakuza work out, the treadmill caught his attention. As he was running, green pastures went through his head where he soared as a child, running after a ball.

“Boris, get the ball!” he remembered the voice of his uncle Ivan The Terrible Fisherman, who often took him fishing.

He ran faster, catching the ball in his thoughts. Giggling, he lifted his arms up and whispered: “Death to fascism, freedom to the people”, respecting the house rules.

Luckily, others noticed the new workout guy, others who ran along the treadmill with light steps, wiping off the invisible sweat, exchanging many a word between one another:

“Sweetheart, I have discovered the Café Menstrualle. You pop one Café Menstrualle and no more ovary pain.”

“Such nice people, these folks”, he thought after a thirty minute cardio workout, ran his fingers through his odorous hair, with but a hint of sweat to it. He reeked of sweat and it felt good to him.

As he was fantasizing about making “Rocky VII”, a young man of 25-ish approached him, dark curly-haired, engulfed in a strong perfume, with buff arms, a square Lego torso and short legs, and he whispered into his ears words that almost froze Boris K. solid.

The trainer shook hands, unknowingly stepping away from Boris K., while down his tiny wrinkle on his young forehead, born out of constant frowning and grimacing, sweat poured.

“Forgive me, sir, but you stink. All the other folks that are working out are complaining about you.”

Boris turned around himself, sensing the sweat and the hostile looks. He shook.

“Male or female?” he applied logic.

“Both sexes.”

He felt being bathed in cold sweat. As if something had been crushing him bone by bone, his field of vision narrowed. Him? He never broke a sweat. Even when he had to go to the doctor’s.

“What?”, Boris K. looked at him nearly maniacally.

“Nothing”, he said and wiped the sweat of his forehead. Catching glimpse of this motion, Boris K. facepalmed, merely uttering that he did not bring a towel which he would use to clear any doubt-raising link between him and sweat.

“Mistah Trainah, I have never once in my life…stunk, not even had a hint of an odor…and even if I did – is this not the right spot for it?” Boris K. was pulling these and similar arguments while counting the seconds in his head, bouncing the words around under his tongue, gulping, until finally he bent the knee and admitted defeat.

He was certain that he did not break a sweat, but this young trainer, who was a bodybuilder for at least a decade, certainly knew everything there was to know about stench.

“I’ve been wrongly accused!”, a slight rise in his tone.

The trainer shrugged and clenched his fists. The other customers started approaching with menacing faces. Boris K. noticed that he’s in a pinch and tried to apply some strategy. He smiled, to which the customers stepped back. Boris K. noticed that the workout gear was unoccupied, seeing as the people using them were surrounding him, therefore nobody was there using them. He felt the uncalm and the desire to leave, but he couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had firmly decided to continue the discussion with the discount Tommy Gann here by any means necessary, come hell or high water.

He felt that he was about to cry any minute. He held himself with both arms, comforting himself gently as the trainer, his voice a chill, suggested that he brought a towel next time, more modern sneakers and a Dolce & Gabbana tracksuit, like the ones other customers had. For a while he trembled out of confusion, uneasiness, he even wanted to cry. He cursed all the towels of God’s green Earth. He shook away the invisible sweat off of himself as the in-full-make-up female customers, casting a glance or two in his general direction, glared at him scornfully. One observed the sole of his left sneaker. Rolling her eyes, she whispered something to the lummox next to her who looked at Boris K., as if ready to crush him. Boris K. was smiling. He went out into the street shook up, confused, disturbed and offended, realizing that there was a stench there and that the trainer was absolutely correct.

“I know what it was! It was the scent of rot!”, he concluded, and stepped into the dark streets towards a new comedy.

Tomorrow Boris K. purchased a café menstrualle deciding that, as soon as he gets the right opportunity, he would complain to other customers at the gym about the pain in his ovaries.

I do not claim that this tale will disturb many a heart, end an endless fear, nor lap up your blood. Besides, many have had stranger tales happen to them than this one of mine, wherein an unending fear reigns. Yeah? On Christmas Eve, no less? This is what you wonder. You, smiling, story-intoxicated reader souls. Should dark wonders emerge from the colors of Christmas trees, betwixt laughter and kisses, the flying confetti? People with no prejudice, I’m talking directly to you now, you that were touched by Pluto, perhaps cut off at the waist by his hand, or pointed by it to the road of an eternal weather wane.

During the Christmas Eve party, in the villa on Gravity Hill, I was invited by Oliver Daldry, a controversial horror director, a master in his field. His amorphous creatures were capable of shapeshifting human organs in Ineffigatius on the Blue Hill, which was selling out packed theatres. He weaved tales later in Reanimated Beasts, the colossal Amorphoso, and the cult classic Hand Shape. All four films were banned after the first screening.

I drove to the villa in my Polo, driving in neutral on the inclines of odd gravitational pulls. I saw streams flowing upstream. I heard rocks ringing. I spotted wavy trees, growing crookedly and its old, knotty branches pinned to the ground.

– Eh, nothing Escher had not already painted – I thought. I was hitting the brakes uphill, meandered circular roads of Danteian architectonics. At long last I made it to the top, parked, managing to wedge my car between two other vehicles. One was a Lamborghini of a plastic surgeon. An attractive purple-haired Mexican girl talked him into, just in case, turning the front tires “hacia el centro de la pista, con el fin de asegurarse de que nada va cuesta arriba”.[1]

I laughed at her superstitious comments, shifted gears and stopped the car in front of the castle gates.

The castle towered over everything, surrounded by pine trees, towered over the villa, shining with the light of the intersecting light beams. Dressed in satin-like soil, umbra-hued villa was filled with numerous guests. The reflectors on the pyramidal roof were squirting droplets of light onto the limos, adding shade to the hue of the horizon.

I exited my car and, as my nose was assailed by the wind from the mouth of a sculpture on the porch, cast in bronze (a mere porch figurine, a misshapen Aeolus), I was welcomed by Daldry, a merry Hitchcock, in a strange way merging with this whole powder keg of a scene.

– My friend! Duck head, rhino neck, horse ears! We lose life illusions, but not optical ones, never those, ha ha ha – he clenched my hand heartily, while his eyes kept check, it seemed, of the items in the background. – Why do you think I chose Pasadena in the first place?

I shrugged.

– I see you have no response. Strange things make up life, my friend, and the creepiest of those have long been swallowed by celluloid – he mumbled with melancholy, only for his face to again be adorned by a smile of a Santa Claus.

– But, do you believe…if you don’t mind me being so personal – he had his hands outspread and whispered to me in a conspiratorial manner – that I feel repulsion towards the dreamlike, to the banal dreamlike. In a paranormal experiment lies the key. I want to assault the world!

– And if the world strikes back? – I followed, hands in pockets. Daldry moved quickly, hunched again, like a determined primate.

– Bingo! – he drummed on my forehead with his finger. – When it strikes back, then, at the very least, the seats are full. – He giggled while we were climbing the stairs up into the inside of the castle.

I was welcomed by a sight of shiny dresses of the female Guests, interspersed with a cacophony of voices.

The ladies were nonchalantly handling the Swarovski glasses. The conversations of various frequencies were intertwined with a lush color palette of the inside of the castle. The enchanting aura of the eve was intersected by Auld Lang Syne.

At times my lust for the film was grand. Oftentimes, as a lad, I went to the local cinema which had a small yet always packed room whose walls were laden with movie posters. While I was sucking up the magic from the big screen, like a vampire, the images merged with one another, like one shape submerging into the next. Enchanted by cabaret dancing, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, I became a boy-worker in the dream factory. As a kid, I was distributing mail, did odd jobs which were still of importance, and as such had the opportunities to be part of casting tryouts – I was excited by the chair creaking when shooting began as well as the canned laughter. And the cameras… ever moving, living, fisheye. After the war, a strange set of circumstances and decisions led me somewhere else, thus having lost nearly all illusions about life, and consequently about art, I was satisfied with an occasional hangout with the film’s greats. After a decade spent in banking investment, with maps of financial schemes as focal points, my war siege on the Big Apple ended in a Caesarean manner, I became a benefactor and collector of film paraphernalia.

Recognizing this passion of mine from my words, the host, followed by a Jew-nosed butler with a tray filled with glasses where we drank large sips from while conversing, quickly and not too formally took me through the villa towards the upper rooms, where many a cinematographic miracle was hiding away: from a vast cinema-for-one built in a surrealist style, to museum props from some ancient and unknown times.

– You know, Jack, this castle belonged to a famous director who died under mysterious circumstances – he gulped – they claim he is the true author of Nosferatu!

I stared through him with an eye of an impressed interlocutor when my eyes rested on an old camera model in the middle of the showcase.

– An this?

– That’s…a very rare model – he said.

I felt the magic of the evening tightening. I took one look at the camera. It was an almost forgotten film projector model, made to shoot silent films, a 9.5mm recorder. I was looking at this appliance of unusual craftsmanship, its round fluorescent lens, its spiky rodent-like tip. As if it were shaped in magma and cast out of the boiling innards of this Earth by sulfur. What are eons but a whisper of living dreams? The reflection of the fluorescent night, snatched away from Nature, was caught in the Shape.

This camera is an artist’s revenge. Down the camera’s lens flowed tears of souls sleeping frozen in time. The walls were the dance floor of purple shadows, as Daldry scraped about in silence smiling.

– But of course. Push the button at the back of the thing and you get a frame. The most natural movie action, my friend. Using this Old Shatterhand I made a pure cinematic beauty last year on a… hmmm… a lady. The damned motor of this thing! – my merry host giggled.

– Who, the lady? – I downed the third glass too, but my sight was clear and sober inasmuch that I could not miss the fine print on the camera’s back. It said: Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, 1922.

– This is one aging lady… for a Sony CA d50…

– RCP… HDV… HDCU… Ah, those modern ones, and yet her acronyms, opposite an old glow of Antiquity. I guarantee you that this age-old camera, and even the models predating it, contains the elixirs of cinematic youth. To replace living human beings with amorphous actors, or rather, to replace a seemingly staged order with a chaotic form, but with a very non-chaotic fixed function, does that seem not-artistic to you? A howling old machine contrasted with the power of new diagrams. The grotesque, bug-eyed larvae, shells of amphibians, formlessness, outline-lessness!

– But…where is the life?

– Life? – Daldry was confused. – Life is merely a function. I merely replace the logical function with an illogical one… I don’t understand…

– Life, a message to people, even if it bleeds, the artistic act and means, unacceptable to many, but safe in the hands of a humane master of horror.

It was as if he was holding back until that point, Daldry burst into laughter and covered his eyes, while his shoulders shook at the same time.

– A humane…master of horror… hahahahahaha, say it again, my friend! If they find it so confusing, why are there so many rows of ticket buyers, standing before the bizarreness…

Suddenly he got more serious, rubbed his bald spot, stared at me with his tiny peepers and mumbled with his lips tightened.

– Why do you think that Cronenberg did not make his new film with this camera in particular? –he pointed to my new metal mistress. – with Camera 22. Maybe a strap or coil were missing here and there, but Tesla managed to fix that for the filmmaker as well. – he said and devotedly looked at the ceiling.

For a moment I thought this man was not about his wits. Too much Socrates in the afternoon heat, perhaps.

– Because it is unbelievable! Those are two mutually exclusive alternatives – I rationalized.

– What if there’s a third?

Wishing to end this conversation that went nowhere, I said this with a funny accent.

– If so, I would love to use it to snatch the fruit of fortune on these faces – I was pointing, over the terrace ledge supported by steel columns, to the merry guests were, entranced as if tangoing, dancing a furious waltz.

– If the perforation between those two images (considering your stance) doesn’t bother you, go on ahead…But, a few more words. You say something is incredible. Is Necker’s cube impossible? It is, but again not as a product of optical illusion…Excuse me a sec. – Daldry went for a couple, a senior gentleman wearing a cylinder hat a la Vienna which, somewhat, covered the entire forehead of deeply sunken black eyes, accompanied by a gorgeous photo-model.

The last thing I caught with my camera’s Eye was Daldry’s hawkish semi-profile enough to uncover a wide smile and extended hands in order to greet the Newcomers. Both directors wore expensive black leather gloves and a similar earring whose shape I could not discern… I looked at the woman. She did not look back even though she was aware of her female power. She shook the hand of another director somewhat more intimate than before. A response, maybe?

While the voices swung like the gowns of gracious ladies waltzing like Furies, I was flipping the wooden box of the old Model, immensely curious yet without someone to share it with. I clicked the button. The camera buzzed.

It captured pompous faces in an unusual clarity of colors, or did the pompousness touch the mystic coil in the rotting idol of technology. It captured the flash of a firecracker, the shining of a distant star. I shot a lady with a generous cleavage trying to hide the dimness of melancholy sprayed in her eye, opening it widely, supposedly impressed. Her husband flirted with some minister’s wife, listening to her interested on the surface while she spoke of secret arrests.

I turned the lens towards a bearded man with gray eyes, inebriated generously, unaware of his surroundings, at the same time gritting his flimsy teeth to giggle, toothless, at the joke of a she-dwarf with a stiff and ridiculously bleached hairdo, mumbling all the way.

– A trinket lady, wee lady, lady…

The rest seemed almost happy. The minister and the she-dwarf danced a primordial tango. The children jumped out and let loose purple balloons from their launcher. It was a specific plastic funnel down which heads of water balloons rolled, sliding down the tube.

– Aim! Fire! – the children were dancing around the popped balloons, tapping their little hands. One tried to save the last balloon. The others chased after him. Someone spoke of da Vinci’s flying contraption, when suddenly, suddenly… The Camera stopped buzzing.

I looked at it from all sides, but found nothing that would stop the hum.

Recording was still happening. I had already downed the fifth glass of champaigne, then spun my head like a proper drunkard, sticking my camera anew into the she-dwarf, but instead saw a centipede crawling on the dance floor of Macabre! I shook my camera with all its might and looked at the recording. Instead of the insect, I saw a geometric abyss where it crawled, vanishing in the macabre darkness. I then spotted a female creature and pointed the camera at it, while my hand shook but faintly. I saw the miracle – instead of a smuggled smile, in the corner of the lips I spotted something inhuman, girlotesque, which increased until a spider crawled out of her mouth. The minute she saw me record, her tongue darted out while the spiders contracted their legs. I grabbed the doorway, frail, dazedly observing the tiny bubbles of the intoxicating drink, while water and latex balloons surrounded me.

– They must put something in this drink. It might be a better idea to go outside, to sober up. Fresh air, lighted area, that’s what I need.

I moved cautiously to the alley… But instead of crushed quartz, I saw a trail spotted with amphibians’ husks. I saw ancient things on the guests’ faces, The important director, an archeologist in his spare time, sat on the bench and slowly turned towards me giving me something resembling hands mumbling with his face in utter fear. The retired general was now a centaur. I set the camera down. The elder centaur was smiling at me, a bit confused because I was already lead by a dark force, on the road to horror, upright on my feet. He fixed his shoulder straps and turned his head to the side in disgust, mumbling.

– Drunkard…

The bench mumbler shrugged, pointed to my camera and giggled.

Again I raised my lens – instead of a mouth it had a small chasm. It was the blackness that sucked up trees while blood moistened his forehead… With dim swipes the black shades were running, animals from the eon of horror, ancient beasts, devourers of time, furious zombies of women with eyelashes, the size of a small sea star, three more othercentaurs.

A white-skinned child, whose face was chiseled into a mythological construct with two all-white eyes, was smiling at me. It was blond, with a red bump growing out of the top of his head and splashing around. It was his brain! I pointed my camera towards the second child which stumbled about, even more disgusting and deformed than the former…

– Diablo, Akuma, get away from that man – a voice of a concerned mother whose face was on the wrong side. Worms crawled in her hair.

– Why, mom?

– Something is wrong with him, on.

– Indeed, kids, look at his face.

– What’s with his nose? It’s bubbling up.

– A Tuber-man – the doppelganger of the first degenerate child laughed disgustingly.

I lowered the camera and turned it to me. I then recorded my own hands while getting confused, still going around and recording the monsters and the rot. They grew, matured, festered, mated, held hands, Hitchcock’s birds on a single wire.

All I could see was all the guests looking at me with open bemusement. I took the lens to me and recorded for a while. I caught nothing, for I had no face, but a fog, maybe a halo.

Horrified, I lowered the camera again, until maddening fear shook me by the shoulders, I saw corpses lined up and cannibals ripping their flesh, while merry people danced around them, and I was crushed by madness, it grew roots in me and was swallowing me whole…

– No, that’s not possible, no! – but, something still made me record it all, was it the summoning of evil in the heart of man, a built-in wicked matter egged on by curiosity and finally hope for an acceptable explanation? Maybe a quest for irony to justify my orgy with averageness. I was an artist, a fascinating Creator archetype, creator of symphonic fantasies at film studies. My shots even impressed prof. Eckhart, an old pro who was now less than a phosphorus mist of memory.

The tape branched into foils of engraved imprints of a decent master of my Nightmares. They were after me ever since I got rid of illusions? That maybe? Conscience?

No mythical foreheritage nor amphibian heroines. And he, Daldry, the merry beast, looked like my role model, the professor. A merry little imp. In a weird way things are becoming set, suppressed anguish grow through the cracks into optical legends viewed through the disfigured noise and theatrical Repentance. But why like this? How come?

I saw the recording, while guests looked at me strangely…Kids played about the corpses.

All of this outside the chasm, the dread, innocence replaced horror, and mouths breathed through the deepest pits.

Within them, oh how strange, in the rhythm and beat of the First of the Ancients, live modern men and civilized thought – fascinated, I looked at the camera. Instead of my face I saw a lichen.

– Where is my face? – I shrieked, to which some ladies fled, and the octopus-man crawling atop some Sisyphus-like rock, as recorded by me, was a gracious gentleman, sober, ever-sober and disgusted by my drunkenness.

– Sir, you’re scaring the children, step away!

– But they’re not children! – I lifted my camera again to see tiny monsters. I felt someone’s enormous hand on my shoulders. I jerked. It was Daldry.

I feverishly pointed the lens at him and saw, not without relief, that his face was his own. The only one, the only…

– My friend, please realize. These are not your friends.

My host fidgeted and looked at them with unease as they stepped away. A mother took her children staring at me with disgust and horror.

– Jack…

– This… – I did not even know how to say this to him. – These are not humans.

– If not, who are they?

Should a genius ask me this? Who are they? Monsters. The price of secrets, all of our hiding, which the lens uncovers. Camera is God, it contains truth of the Guests, this night, the noise, the glimmer, the cold night of warm colors…

– You had a whole bottle of Daniels, Jack.

I grabbed his lapels and shook him.

– Snap out of it, man, look for yourself, look at your friends through the lens of truth an you’ll see. Degenerates, passed through the wall of the paranormal, extended their hairy hands, found the broken window separating man from ancient beast!

A lucky firecracker exploded in the distance.

– It must have something to do with the story of the dead director. He saw what I saw, and THEY killed him – I was waving my arms, getting in his face.

– Shall we call the police, Jack? – he took me down the Amphibian trail, while a wrinkle of unease dominated his forehead.

– Grand idea! Two of us, it will be easier to prove?

– Two? – my friend turned to me, while his bald spot shone on the moon, tearing the whole of his head suddenly split in twain by the butcher’s knife of moonlight. I saw his head top and a tunnel dug through it – At least four, my friend, at least four – he laughed maniacally.

I fell to my knees, barely breathing, mind and body collapsed, with me, on the ground.

I was covered in husks. Daldry took the newly-abuzz camera. I looked at him with hope. He was recording a child. As its facial structure changed, an impish smile emerged on his lips, and tears of joy moistened his cheeks.

– Such wonderful amorphous shapes tailor-made for my flick. Such fungi! All dead, yet living, living! Ah, Rheta of Gable, you will dance again for me!

I was enveloped by non-epitomized fear. With feeling totally disoriented, I felt a sad apathy towards death. While nerves were running down to my feet, I ran as fast as I could, looking for my keys mid-flight in my pockets. I found them, but they fell out of my shaky hands and onto the ground. I got them back up, while a fish-scale monster was coming closer, but they fell again and several times more until the lock snapped them into place.

In that time, the Creatures were coming closer. Various creatures they were, from Volvoxes, following corals, to El Chupacabra.

– Get him! He’s ours! – a woman said who had cilia instead of hair. A half-man, half-sponge was following her. A producer-euglena pointed at me – There! He’s getting away!

At that moment my gaze was directed at the hidden tunnels of the Pasadena forests, so I went on with effort through the trees, chased by euglenas and ciliates, with antigravity tugging my legs back, towards the filthy visions.

My limbs were rods of concrete. Shaking, drenched in cold sweat, I went head first into some endlessly muddy pipe rotating around its axis, with neck-break speed, until it made a powerful gust of wind. Aeolus cast whirlpools, while my scream charged from my tortured consciousness’ deep, until the muddiness stopped, and nausea kicked in. Then, my nostrils swelled up and spread to make room for two nasty tarantulas.

They started lunging. Wicked spirits soon all in my face, shifting, stepping forth and back, hissing and tongue-darting of swollen snake jaws, iris-less eyes covered in cracked skim. What posed as faces would stay for a short while, only to disappear, sucked into the whirlpools.

With my remaining strength I hugged trees in order to use them to stand up to the power of inertia dragging me back. But the trees, demonic allies of my pursuers, either moved away or turned to plastic flowers. The moment I made a bigger step in my inert state, the more the Force would get me back. They were about to get me, but I managed to run uphill and roll down at the end of the path, at the very entrance to the circular forest, a circle above the Upper woods that surrounded the castle.

The Grotesques were sunbathing down roads. Midnight sun roasted the ice land. Pasadena turned to an oven. For a second it was as if I were at the very edge of Calahari, grabbing the mystic heat with bloody fingers.

– Some vector must have twisted, and the sexes switched, ghoulish points dug deep into the dark heart of Pasadena – I mumbled at the mirage, while pine trees rose, stately like tombs. Mid-laughing maniacally, I let out an eerie scream under the nightmarish sky of Gravity Hill.

I ran down the snowy road with tire tracks OF ONE CAR! – nigh fanatically images of a surreally packet Daldry villa parking lot came into reality, towards which only one road led, one tire track.

While running up one of round inclines, I was encouraged by a cynical voice – Daldry’s.

– Against the wind, yes, my Friend, run like the wind, for only Aeolus can save you. Hence why we cast him in bronze.

I was out of breath, while my desperate face was dyed titan-white by the ghoulish light of the moon.

– Go on, Forest, a good jump! Though you are already rather deep in the forest…

From the treetop an anaconda’s ancestor descended, wrapping my body along with the entire tree trunk. Shrieking I tried to get free from the powerful constrictions, while something within me was being choked, dehumanized. My mouth agape I too darted my tongue which fused with the Serpentine tongue, which made me puke on the wet grass. Suddenly, it let loose and I dropped to my knees, troubled, at the very edge of my life and sanity.

I got up. Anew. Followed by a symphony of shrieks and laughter mixed in with dread which condensed within, like a hot, culminating note.

I tried to move in a straight line, looking for anything to serve as a landmark. I looked skyward. No clouds, nothing other than the full moon. I moved north (or south, I thought desperately, amid the abnormal forest) when I saw the broad mountain path with marked rocks. I followed them whipped by icy wind, their red arrows and numbers going in this sequence: 4, 3, 2, 1 (spaces between rocks were about a hundred-ish meters each), and each number was punctuated by a geometric shape, only for the final stone to contain 01 and a figure of a tetraxis.

– It’s the reverse Pythagoras’ theorem of matter. It shows laws of matter don’t matter. Matter falls apart…into – ROTTING MEAT! – growled a dog-headed man and barked a few times, licking my face and breathing at me with the breath of a rotting corpse.

The creature lunged several times, and it was incorporeal and said – Have a grave!
TAKE IT! TAKE IT!

I was writhing in pain, screaming, my eyes already sunk and arms before my knees, waiting for the bastard to stop barking. When he did, a strong wind crushed the head in a whirlpool, which made me realize that trapped Aeolus was protecting me. I stepped into the forest and saw round water shining in the dark, and above it a far more shapely girl, bedecked in flowers.

Leaning above the lake, enchanted with her reflection, she touched the icy water with her breasts, dipping her sandy hair in it. I approached, enchanted, while twigs cracked under my light steps. Taken by these feelings, I moved my hands towards her, while branches bent towards the nubile body, wishing to pounce, to the safety of her hips, her wild eyes, o let her hands console me… Her indigo eyes looked at me askance and she got up, revealing a cow’s tail. At that moment, a rotten function started disfiguring the flesh of her face, shifting it into a complete mineral, polyhedron in shape, malachite green.

No! Flee! As far from the cow bride, this Night, this merry, cadmium night, as soon as possible, leaving giant elephant footprints behind –while the mythical Hydra chased me with a desperate shriek “marry me, Jack!” I was destroying bushes and with my tusks plucked trees from their roots, but the green lined behind me suddenly grew from her vengeful hand, a nude girl alone for eons, threatening to cover me up and stop my elephant heart.

At that moment, in my unending joy, I spotted the Light shining through everything, and while my dark elephant skin was dyed in albinism and my trunk ripped, a degenerate baby passed by me with even steps, at least a thousand years old and forty-five centimeters tall, wishing me good luck, toasting me with a Swarovski glass, while a pungent cloud of champagne breath steamed from its fangs… Through all of the firecracker and banging noises, suddenly a car went for me, rammed into my semi-open body and I did not hear the Warlock’s final words to his butler, which were as follows.

– This Jack dude has no sense of art. Get the camera back to its place, Peter, and call the Next one. But, hold on…

He smiled watching the projected model on the Camera’s recording, isolated from nature.

The thing, stuck in the recording, forever at its new home, was yelling in the chamber.

-My friend, you’re having a catharsis Antigone would envy you for. – Daldry uttered these mellifluous words to the bizarre creature banging on the eternal glass with human hands, pushing it with its trunk.

– An antique ideal – he was impressed. Looking at the Elephant-man, the uncompromising director wiped a tear discreetly.

– Pure fascination! – a fourth person added, a woman with the brain of an amoeba in the body of a giraffe.

– Still, at the end of the day, he wasn’t that bad of a sample – the long-nosed butler joined the observation, touching my trunk in envy.

Daldry removed his gloves and scratched the glass.

– Do you hear him screaming? He speaks! He says I trapped him! No, I didn’t trap you, my friend. I put you in the film’s context, the context of the role, the impossible, heh, impossible. The things he comes up, I swear… Anyway, your reaction is merely a phase. I’m sure I’ll find a good role for you. I will install such a diffusing system in your body that every single hydra will envy you.

The Elephant-man was howling, trapped in the camera, while larvae crawled over his eyes, and tentacles of the bride-to-be-hydra jabbed into his salty wounds.

– Why lament? – Daldry wondered. – You’re not alone. Your darling is budding with you. You married her, and didn’t even invite me to the wedding. And he wants me to free him!

On the other hand there was a begging, muffled sound.

– Please let me go. I didn’t want to be an actor anyway, but a director. What will come of me now?

– Ah, my friend, you’ll get used to it, others did. Trust your Creator. It’ll pass. The Chinese said so – the giggles were now becoming howls – But if you insist, I love to mold you rebels into statues. Dionysius rebelled, and look what happened.

– What?

– Theater! – Daldry nearly swore.

Daldry then used harsh words to reprimand the present bastards, contextuals, actors, extras, all as Your Grace commands.[3]

– What, you monsters? What is this procession silence? You’re not in Les Misérables, but in a stinking film on rotting tape. Let the fun continue, for…this’ll be a long New Year’s Eve – he mumbled, covering his bald spot with a Santa hat, going back inside with claws in his pockets.

[1] Towards the middle of the driveway in order to make sure that nothing goes downhill for them.

[2] (in Italian) Dario, my friend, how are you? Welcome to my Dracula 3D castle. This must be Tania, our beauty. …Miriam, darling! Take care of him. If he is not eaten by the wolf or by Dracula, he will by Mina.

In his tiny two-by-two hole in the wall, Boris K. sat with a dignified expression on his face and his legs out in a straddle. He wore two left slippers of diverse colour. As he casually turned to peer in the cracked mirror, he was greatly displeased by the sight of his slicked-back gray hair. He attempted to part it à la Sieg Heil, but could not really pull it off because – he wore a flower in his hair, you see.
At springtime, as the locks of his raven hair started blooming, he left all the women breathless (left-wing ones in particular, as they were especially partial to flowers).
“There is a certain symbolism to them,” they claimed.
Boris K. was a seasoned communist, a ruin left behind by the transition, a redundant loser. Like many others, he looked back on the times when he subscribed to the Labourer newspaper with nostalgia. It used to be a matter of prestige.

Due to his former high-ranking positions as the coffee brewer and sentry for the Trade Union sessions, he retained the habit of sitting, sleeping and eating dressed in a gray business suit. On that cold evening he was waiting for the arrival of his landlady while reading “The Trial”. Remembering the times past and the chanting of the famous “Comrade Fidel, if you so said/we’d go live in a car shed,” Boris K. mused how, everything said and done, he was actually still living according to his beliefs. The very thought was heartwarming. Boris’ “car shed” belonged to none other than the very harpy, the very shrew who announced her intent to arrive at 6 AM on the dot. At that time, with the first rays of sun, she was to materialize in the flat. Boris felt hungry and mildly nauseous. Maybe it was the fear of the landlady, or perhaps an omen of the apocalypse. He felt confused. By the powers of the left wing, Boris K. was no coward!
He approached the old refrigerator, opened the handless door, and saw a drunken lady squeezed into a small glass cage. It was a bottle of vodka, the Russian standard with 40 percent of alcohol. The poster on the wall offered him support and encouragement, or at least so it appeared to Boris K. It seemed to be saying “Bottoms up, Boris! Long live the counterrevolution!”
“Alas… if only I could squeeze myself inside just like you,” Boris thought wistfully. He envisioned his landlady, the morning sun illuminating her like a halo, menacingly brandishing the electricity bill. He huddled against the wall, crying like a baby, his cheek resting against a poster. A thought pierced his aching head, which throbbed as if clenched within a hoop. “But I don’t drink.”
“Now or never,” he spoke out loud. After the first sip, it occurred to him that he should attempt to seduce his aging landlady. He was determined to fight to the bitter end.
“This is how Alexander the Great charged against the Persians with his sword!” he thought, detaching his tear-stained cheek from the poster. “Is the casino Alexander still open?” he asked the wall hopefully, his face beaming.
Feverishly, he contemplated the way to get out of debts. Even without a penny to his name, Boris K. decided to try his luck at the adjacent casino. He took a big gulp of vodka and stumbled. Toppling the chair, he knocked down the suit and the grey socks and grabbed for the closet. He let the bottle drop out of his hand after the second swig. Somewhere in the pile of jumbled clothing Boris spotted a formal suit à la Vienna. He looked at it from all sides. He looked both ways furtively, as if he were not alone in the room, so surprised he was at the appearance of a beautiful, shining suit in such a gloomy environment. He stroked the buttons gently with his fingertips. It was exactly what he needed. Boris K. looked up at the ceiling and muttered “Thanks!”
Delighted, he cast another glance toward the closet and noticed the secret barrier dividing it into two parts. He grabbed the handle and shook it tentatively, but it appeared to be locked. Boris K. stepped back and stood in the middle of the room. The bottle of vodka back in his hand, he raged at the locked compartment.
“You’re hiding some great treasure, I know it!” “
He heard something rattle in one of the suit pockets. His hands shook as he rifled through the pockets, but all he found there was some brass buttons.
“Pure gold,” he soothed himself.
Donning the suit, he decided to use the buttons as gambling tokens. Thrilled with his incredible discovery, Boris K. danced a few bars of the Viennese waltz in front of the cracked mirror, arranging his hair. Out of breath, he fell onto the sofa. He was transported back to the harsh reality by the picture of Fidel Castro winking – or so it seemed to Boris K – straight at him.
“Too much to drink,” Boris concluded. Pulling himself together he threw the cheap buttons into the corner of the room, took one glance at the electricity bill and burst into tears.
The old lady entered just as she promised – illuminated by the first rays of sun. On her dress, tailored back in the forties, she wore an embroidered swastika.
“The Brazilian tarantula. Such an elegant little animal,” she explained to the curious butcher’s wife in passing. She wore lace gloves, dirty fingernails showing through. Smoothing down her oily hair, she swiped a dainty finger over one of her eyebrows, tattooed according to the latest fashion. Following the unfortunately drawn arch, she cast an Ilse-Koch-like look to Boris K. A cynical smile spilled across her elderly, clenched lips.
“Cash on the table,” she pulled out a stopwatch from her undershirt, “in 60… 59… 58…” As she counted down, it appeared, the last seconds of Boris K’s short life, the age spots on her cheeks broke through the layers of golden foundation and bright lipstick on her cheekbones.
“Do sit down, old Fräulein,” stammered Boris K, pointing to the sofa as full of holes as a Swiss cheese and stinking of cigarettes. The old woman threw him a contemptuous look. Boris K. realized his mistake. “Meine Frau,.. I… I… Frau, bitte,” he stammered, hypnotized by the embroidered swastika flanked by a flashy heart-shaped medallion. Finally, he murmured “Just let me run to the casino. I forgot my wallet next to the roulette here.”
“The casino, you say?” The old woman swiped the corners of her widely open mouth using a forefinger and a thumb.
“I swear by… this poster on the wall, Fräulein Suzy!”
She studied him like one would an insect and, with a sudden twist, cast a look filled with loathing at the poster of Fidel Castro. Stalin was her true love, but it was a fact she carefully concealed.
“Too bad he is an infidel,” she said as the light pushed its way through the dirty windows, illuminating her head like a halo. Her voice rang with the austerity typical of elderly women of reckless youth, who remembered their days of decadence just a touch too wistfully. Once easy, now a puritan, she had changed the dirty skin of her body and threw it on the altar of martyrdom, akin to a snake.
Boris K. repented his actions. He felt like taking off his nonexistent à la Vienna hat.
The old woman turned, eyes bulging, and approached him at a menacing pace. With the stance of an SS officer, her long nose touching the chest Boris K, Frau sniffed him, noticed the empty a bottle of vodka and contemptuously waved her hand. Settling into the sofa, she closed her eyes in the manner of a yogi. It lasted a whole of fifteen minutes, with Boris K. perspiring, dabbing the sweat from his brow and occasionally massaging her feet, until she cried
“Genug! Stop!” Her wide open eyes startled Boris K and he immediately stood to attention. “At ease!” Boris K. threw the left shoe off his right foot, hips swaying. “I forgive you, just as my Fritz would have done,” she murmured wistfully, remembering her old love – a high ranking SS officer, carried off by the maelstrom of war. Boris K. burst into tears of happiness. “But, under ein condition! ,” she roared in a thunderous voice. Boris K. was all ears. “I will write off your debt if you can squeeze yourself into this bottle.” The Frau pointed at the vodka bottle. “Verständlich? Understand?” the implacable Frau screeched.
Boris K. glanced at the bottle, then at his soft, pink hand (he was an artist, and it is well known that they do absolutely nothing under the sun). He wanted to protest, to say that one could not treat the oppressed classes so. Squeezing people into bottles like that? Not even Mengele would have thought of that, he thought – but said nothing. Somehow he managed to bend his back; he crumpled, growing smaller, lowering his proud fists, his skillful fingers curled and his head hung low. Thus his entire body distorted.
Boris K. kept diminishing before the terrible powers of the frau, finally growing small enough to squeeze his tiny hand into the vodka bottle, followed by his shoulder, chest and spine – the latter proved easy enough to squeeze into the bottle – and finally his feet, which by that point had completely refused to obey him. Thus Boris K. successfully completed his task under the Frau’s contended smile. Only Boris’ two large, terrified eyes remained visible.
The giant frau stood up, took the vodka bottle and headed for the locked compartment – the strictly guarded secret of all secrets. For years she was suspected of hiding, if not jewelry, then at least Fritz’s letters there. She reached into her pocket for the gilded key and opened the plywood compartment. Frau looked with pride upon the arranged bottles of numerous manufacturers – English and French, but mostly German. One bottle contained Sir Gawain, her former tenant, the second Herr Hans, and the third, Jean-Paul. From the fourth, the Obergruppenführer Fritz (the former supreme commander of the Waffen-SS) smiled at his lover, the Frau, who blew him a tender kiss. Each of the bottles contained a tenant hopefully peering through the stained glass of his prison, every one of them grateful to his landlady for being so very generous as to write off his debt.

00.00
I have always hated people. Always or after one woman stabbed my heart with a knife? I have no excuse, because hatred is a gift we receive upon birth and not some acquired imagination.
They hated me too. But, I was exceeded by the persistence of my disbelief and my hatred which was, contradicting even their own, pulsed stronger. Petty illusions were bringing short term relief, so I would, at times, mercifully get carried away to awaken love in some woman. When you are a dark hero, you are not pure in your soul and the demons pursue you. You see evil in everything, or something special in which evil lays (perhaps the handsomeness of evil) When there is no longer any tenderness within you, it is a feeling of a constant thwack. You are cold, and some mute perpetrators are ripping the clothes off your body, again and again. While they are doing that, hatred and disgust is clearly visible on their faces. In the imagined laboratory of my mind, heavily lit and full of rats, there is plenty of poison and weapons, and you, the common humans which I hate, are the main experiment of the Great Scientist. Like a dead drummer, I yawningly hit the little drums while walking the streets of some dark city. You are present in it, and I am like a hollow tree trunk among blossoming trees bearing exotic fruits. I am not saying that an occasional exchanging of warm words or touch does not feel good. A cold coffee is just as drinkable as the hot one. Sometimes, a woman with an hourglass body makes me feel like a man, like everybody else does, directing herself in waves towards my genitalia. But, you cannot believe the same lie twice. It is a black sun that only glows partially. At times it manages to replace the suns of other people and the ways in which that luminous trickster shines to them. Those moments last short, therefore I am my own sun, at the same time a shadow, I – the used puppet who observes the remains of the humorous theater play from which he was removed, by having his legs and arms torn away from his limbs. He is angry at the actors of the play. By the course of time, a lot of water gathered between me and other people.

00:23
Maybe my hatred was born 23 years earlier when I have met a boy with curly hair, near a murky body of water, during a very dark time of my childhood. It was warm and dry. The sun fried with its whips. Like the golden mask of Medusa, it grinned above the forest of my childhood.
– You are the one whose father hung himself? – said the little leader of the gang, whom they called Dirty Josh, and touched me with a stick.
– You are already five minutes late. I hope you brought them.

I did not answer. I offered him the lead soldiers.
– Here is the replacement for life.
He took them and lined them up on the wooden bench, surrounded by trees the color of ebony. His hands were sweating while he was arranging them into the little battalion.
– This is my battalion and that one is yours. Since you were late, the punishment for defeat will be death. Don’t ever forget it. Let us see who is stronger.

With the best of my strength, I would charge his figurines with mine. Perhaps you think I shouldn’t have shown so much zeal? I would act differently now. I would spit on him or cut him with a knife. From this other thing, I always feel a tingling in my stomach and realize it is disgust, mixed with fear. From MY soldiers he picked all the strongest and prettiest ones (my father carved them before his death, but not all of them were equally pretty). Some of them were really badly made, but it would depend from how much did he drink that day. When a soldier was done, my father would stick him into the ground and say:
– Son, this is your army. And your strength for life..

When he was making Achilles and Spartacus, he was drinking moderately. So they were, even thought Josh’s soldiers were prettier and greater, my Achilles and Spartacus, successfully protecting the flank, so I won the fight for an equal battle with my effort (or perhaps hatred). I could only imagine how much agitated was the evil boy because of it. Seeing he wanted to show himself in front of his gang, and that he chose the strongest soldiers, he could not lose. His were, in tense expectation, drenched in sweat. That is when I realized that human greed, hatred (and sometimes lust as well) smell like salt, a salty bath in which a woman lays with her open legs and the smell of her sex, like with animals, merges with the stench of fear and salt. All hatred begins in childhood. You have not been lied to. Innocence can only produce crime, because within what lies the vanity of the crime if there is not some nostalgia in it due to innocence lost. I am convinced that the man does get born clean. People become evil in time. And all are, with no exception, evil. Crooked and evil.
I showed Achilles to the small man:
– Yesterday his tooth got chipped, so he is not well, otherwise he would slaughter your entire battalion . Just HIM ALONE. If he was well, he would’ve done it already. If only his tooth was not hurting so much. It still hurts him. You see. He is great, strong, powerful.
– Ah, like that! Ah, like that!
Dirty Josh wrenched it out of my hand, and while giggling, threw him onto the loam next to the bench, because he thinks he is powerful. And he stepped on him accompanied by the laughter of the play actors, until, with his torn limbs, sweaty and satisfied, he pardoned him. That is when the evil boy threw Achilles in the dirt, into the murky water, far away from himself. Dirty Josh laughed. That is when I saw he was also missing a tooth. His corpse was found three days later, in the murky water, wormy from piss, dirty from blood and mud, with the lead stick figure stabbed into the center of his forehead. The wound hole was too big, almost grotesque. The spike, once corded inside, had layers of the brain mass stuck to it upon being pulled out.
I still keep Spartacus, and I never made a new Achilles. All hatred starts in the childhood. You have not been lied to.
Sometimes I hear tapping on the door. I first thought it was the rain. But no, it is Achilles. In the robes of a strong, Greek hero with bare, hairy feet, slowly stepping into my home. He looks at me and I look at him. We are cold, we do not speak and we eat fish.

00:46
I am never late. I posses an enormous collection of antique clocks. A pile of beige boxes full of the second hands, some pocket watches with monocles, huddled into order, peeks from a Victorian jacket. My hours is what defines me. No moment is worth more than that bare notion. The tick of the clock industriously warns that I am already five minutes late to the opening of my own store. Then, with the speed of a rabbit who heard a hum and trembled and leaped, I exit for the street with a smile. My antique shop is located in the trade area of the K. city, in one solidly built house with walls out of brick.
On the board, hanged upon a fir door, a headline reads “RARE BOOKS” (photographs, postcards, old charts, maps and musical instruments). Modern electrical heating under the porcelain panels and economical stoves are in the kitchen compartment. Vis-à-vis to the kitchen and the small bathroom (actually, it is composed of a single lavatory and a soap selvage) is my work desk with a computer. The work room has a low ceiling, and the sockets are on the Spanish wall, for phone and the satellite dish. The work room exit leads straight into the room for welcoming customers in which there is a big stall behind which I show antiques to customers and receive money.

7:23 AM.

Today somebody wished me death. Like a dog’s grimace in the corner of a yard that’s not his own. A short shriek over the phone and wheezing:
– Die!
It was an open invitation, a desire for neck breaking. What should I answer? How should I defend myself, so it never crosses their minds to call again? I stop before the gate, then open it indecisively and enter a narrow field that surrounds the hovel. I kicked the dog, but gently. The dog moved away, and then fixated on me with his eyes. Right next to the window frame, I sneak a peek inside. A darling character used to be huddled in the bed, covered over his head, and the sheets above him swollen from breathing. A naked void is under the covers now. The sheet does not give away someone still breathing and thinking under it. Like a corpse. I imagine how the sheet stands upright, the corpse fills with semen, pullulates and sprouts, grows up to the muscles, tissue, blush, luxury of cheeks, an eyeful glow. A young girl, with her face dirty and yellow from some hidden melancholy, gets up from the bed, takes the full laundry basket, and then beats him with a stick. That there is a mother! I extended my hands to her. My hands miss and touch the icy cold air. She passes through me and claps her hands, spins and dances while observing the miniature paintings lined next to the barrels in the yard. I sit on a stool and with smooth moves of my fingertips I touch the masonite. Then only a whisper is heard and that wheezing, the crying, wailing. The dog begins to howl.
– Who are you? What are you doing there? – the old man from the house next door points his slim finger at me. Then he recognizes me, spits on the side, opens the bottle which he uses to refresh his face. He refreshes himself on top of the empty snow. Then looks around, at least it seems so to me, the endless sky, stretched into nothingness. That infinity can never be remembered and neither could SHE ever paint it fully. The snow sticks to the inner part of my suit. Sticks to the skin. I entered the cold shanty of my once home, and observing the paintings mother painted, I knowledgably distinguish patterns and colors. I notice some of them were done rather badly, or perhaps are not so close to me anymore. The old man and I light our cigarettes and look at each other. He watches me through the window. While he watches me, he murmurs into his own beard and raises his head to the sky again. Then, like a defeated peacock, he bends his head into the wet snow, where the peace of death reigns. I hear some kind of a people buzz, but it is too far away from me. I am amid the cold, vacant garden, surrounded by paintings, wet laundry, dirty glasses and broken mirrors. I flip everything that is dirty, touch it gently with my hand, move the dust and put a few miniatures into my bag.
– How will you clean this?
– What?
– How will you clean all of this, now that all of your kin has died? – the old man asks.
I am completely close to the wall, and then, leaning through the low window, I throw the dirty glass over the fence, directly to the old man’s wall. It shattered, and dark, greasy liquid sprayed out onto the wall. The old man ran away frightened. After the old man leaves me alone, I become concentrated enough to spot the gramophone which I came to pick up. It was, certainly, very old, with a handle. The mechanism is completely upstanding, and it has a special record compartment as well, I will tell to a customer on the same day. I wash my face with cold water over the dirty lavatory and I play Beethoven’s violin concert in d minor, which spills through the room through the whirl of Poe-like terror. I pick books. I flip pages of each of them and rip them one by one. Not for sale. Can a man be more alone?

7:46
I see myself among skyscrapers; they grow me like I am a plant. I was ripped from the surrounding smoke, but I am sprayed by it. I stagger around like the poisoned sewer water. The asphalt is hit in the middle. Cloven. Like on the clavier, my feet mingle the sidewalk. Eyes are gripped into the darkness of the glasses. Here and there, I hear a bat of footsteps behind me. The head of the people orchestra is the Kapellmeister whose massive truncheon, like thunder, hits the naked, pissed on concrete. The world can be horrible, but not dirty. In all that disgust, I kept my good taste. During all this time, the sun was, wanting to fulfill its primate at any cost, trying to pierce through the curtain of smoke. Devouring, intoxicating sun pierces into the softness of the morning, whitened sun, a powdered ball. I noticed the way it twirls, how it rises and powers the sky like a giant, yellow bug on batteries. Like some clock, the sun measures the hours with ancient precision and swallows the passerby with immeasurable fever of eternal existence. You are nobody and nothing, and the yellow bug crawls over you, and each of her prong points a finger to you, accusing you of transience, of tardiness. It often exists like counterweight, but also a help to the grayness of the clouds who are like bulletproof vests. One selvage of metal pulses with a glow and illuminates the parts of the overcast architectonics of the city. Sometime later, the city is filled with moonlight and the light lasts deep into the night. Arctic star, as enormous as a plate with two curious eyes, will soon crack in the sky. Eternal light, the eternal peace that bothers me, for I demand the darkness that brings me joy.

Healthy urban man, one of the numerous tenants of the New Building, decided to lose a certain number of kilograms, for it was known that in the newer buildings there was only a certain number of kilograms allowed per floor. The calculator was deciding the correlation with height, to prevent occurrences of dislocation, deviation, turning into men-frogs or spider crabs.

The calculator was clearly showing that he needs to lose 5 kilograms, 2 grams and 10 milligrams. But, in order to lose that alarming number it was necessary to leave the New Building every night exactly at nine o’clock and run the route of five of stations of the forty-two bus then stop in the street which leads to the station of the bus number fifty-nine.

All of these numbers made sense, especially for Pythagoras.

Just as he left the building, Healthy urban man realized that the New Building, even though overpopulated, is flawlessly clean. After he thought about it he realized that he saw the tenants, who lived peaceful and quiet lives, very rarely, except in front of the buildings entry, while they were unlocking the door and after that disappearing down the ghastly empty hallway into unknown directions.

He thought about all of this, Healthy urban man, while he was returning from his jog and unlocking the entry door of the building. The light turned on automatically, welcoming him.

“My life is perfect,” he thought. “Everything slides like down the light…” this one thought, like well-oiled, while caressing the key and gently tracing the lettering on the metal relief.

“Permil by permil.” He thought while climbing step by step.
“Permil then a stair, a stair then the door, key then lock.” he was thinking while inserting the key into the lock.

Then, however, something unexpected happened. He shivered, while his hands shook from fear. The key was stubbornly refusing to open the lock. He was agonized, he tried and tried and finally realized he will have to ask help from his neighbors. He checked the display of his cell-phone. “No, it is far too late.” Besides, they will think he is crazy. They will cuss at him, perhaps even hit him. With fear he looked into the spyhole on the next door.

He was relieved after seeing the number 9.

“That means, that means I’m healthy. “he thought . “And that I merely wandered off in my thoughts, missed my floor. Ha ha ha ,” he laughed with relief. “I was just confused.”
But his brain worked and steamed with a speed of the comet which whipped the dinosaurs: “It looks like I was trying to break in into an apartment. By mistake, ofcourse, but they can accuse me in court. They can move me into the Old Building, with those misfortunates, the hunchbacks of the Silicon valley.” He turned around and smiled like a lucky thief.
When he entered the lucky apartment 13, he went to bed, content.

A few days later, in the apartment number 8, a corpse was found, of an old lady, standing upright. She lived alone, without any kin. It was told that she did not leave her apartment for years , nor received any visitors. Maybe she escaped the Old Buildings and was by mistake given an apartment in the Newbuild. Her stiff mouth was forming the letter ‘O’, as though she is calling someone for help. She was gripping the lock, like she was fighting someone from the other side of the door, a burglar most probably. That is how she died. From fear.